


your devil and your deeds

by LadyRaincloud



Series: Love Is Touching Souls [1]
Category: The Penumbra Podcast
Genre: AU from the end of Man of the Future, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Body Horror, Canon-Typical Violence, Gaslighting, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Is comfort coming in sequels? PERHAPS, Juno is doing his best but self-absorption dies hard, M/M, Mentioned Rita (Penumbra Podcast), Mick is mentioned, Mind Control, POV switches between chapters, Partial Mind Control, Past Torture, and very few (none) happy things in the middle, consider this a brief interlude before canon events of Soul of the People ensue, entirely non-sexual choking, gratuitous references to Train From Nowhere and Thief Among Us, i guess, in this story not only is there no happy ending, no beta we die like men, the action thereof at least, there is no happy beginning, this is perhaps even less happy than the first chapter but it'll all be okay
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-13
Updated: 2019-02-09
Packaged: 2019-10-09 05:58:03
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 15,959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17401316
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/LadyRaincloud/pseuds/LadyRaincloud
Summary: ‘Isn’t this what you would want, too? To show him that there’s another way, a better way for things to be, by showing him how it could make you? You would still be you, but good. You would be honest, you would be safe, you wouldn’t need to want to be violent or a thief or a liar. You would be better.’Domesticated, Ramses didn’t say, but Nureyev felt the word crawl up his spine anyway.Peter Nureyev wasn't going to hear about the 'Guardian Angel of Hyperion City' without investigating and seeing if he needed to intervene.He's not as prepared as he thinks he is for what he'll find.





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> The fic title, as well as the title of the series it'll become, are from from 'A Case of You' by Joni Mitchell. I may or may not be planning a series entirely because of the fact that the entire song kept giving me emotions about Jupeter.
> 
> I couldn't find any kind of content warning that fits, but the descriptions of the THEIA's bodily control are partly based on my experience of seizures, so if that's not great for you maybe give it a miss?
> 
> This is the first proper fic I've ever written, and the first I'm ever posting. (Hence the tagging and formatting possibly being all wrong. If they are, I apologise.)
> 
>  
> 
> Thank you to [mercutiglo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/mercutiglo/profile) for looking over this, and for generally being lovely and stopping me from chickening out on posting it.

Moses Krasnaya was a philanthropist and a tycoon, words that should have been mutually exclusive, but would appeal to his mark. He was notably less successful, and less _worthy_ , though, in case he should be considered any sort of threat. He had come to Newtown to try to observe direct action, with no driving political agenda behind it beyond goodness for goodness’ sake, to learn from a man who founded his whole platform on altruism, and who, against all odds, won. He was awkward and fumbling and desperate to prove himself in his ability to do good in the universe, and more than a little in awe of the man who had managed to do so much in so little time. He projected self-effacing embarrassment at his status, but also wouldn’t hesitate to use it to push to obtain an audience with the man currently most sought after for comment on Mars, if not the whole galaxy.

 

Nureyev had almost reconsidered the reference to Earth mythology in his name, given it struck him that a man who slipped in and out of names and identities may – not be a kindred spirit as such, but they may have shared the affinity for name meanings. But he’d seen streams of Ramses O’Flaherty, seen the unshakeable faith he seemed to have in himself and his agenda, the kind that couldn’t be faked, and thought that if he did recognise the name as being related to the downfall of the ancient king he’d named himself for, he’d write it off as an amusing coincidence at best, a slightly jarring and ominous one at worst. And, Moses Krasnaya thought, a man like that could probably do with the introduction of a little fear into his life while he carried out his grand plans.

 

Word was flitting across the stars, all the way to the remote moon he had been cooling his heels on while lying low from Plutonion law enforcement, of this man, the _Guardian Angel_ of Hyperion City, if not all of Mars, and as soon as those words had reached him Nureyev had had to resist the urge to find the first shuttle he could be on. This kind of thing merited planning and forethought, so he waited as long as he could, until the plan was already in motion, to slip into his new character and travel across the galaxy.

 

He'd had no plans to ever return to Mars, much less Hyperion City, but the threat of a despot had proven more pressing than keeping promises, and he’d had a long time to get used to being a man for whom honour was less of a concern again. It was still difficult, though, as he watched the blur of stars passing the windows of the shuttle, to not think of the phrase _swing in on a beam of starlight_.

 

There were crowds outside the gates of Newtown, not that he’d expected anything less. He wove through the crush of bodies and the clamour silently, a ghost making his way through. None of them would have noticed him even if he were someone with less of a proclivity for inconspicuous movement, though. The gates weren’t an issue for him, and he was in the shining building on the hill without detection in less time than he’d expected. Enough to make up for the plans already being in motion, no, but he’d worked on tighter deadlines than this before.

 

From the hill’s apex, he could see across the city of pastel coloured buildings, and something tugged at buried parts of him. Seeing it from above, and even the name being similar to the floating city he really had never returned to, brought home the significance of what he was up against here.

 

He was older now, and had more experience behind him, and more time planning. Regimes were hard to topple, but he was nothing if not confident in his own ability to set the cascade going.

 

On a job like this, his alias wasn’t really much more than a name. This was always the kind of thing that was going to bring Peter Nureyev back, even if the man who came here was more angry and experienced and quicker to violence than the teenage revolutionary. Moses Krasnaya had lived a lot longer and seen a lot more people fail and die in standing up to regimes than Peter Nureyev ever did, and he had a lot fewer qualms about how he could go about stopping this from being one such outcome.

 

A ghost slipped into the building, and moved through empty corridors – surprising, despite the research he had done prior not having shown any plans for Mayor O’Flaherty to be elsewhere. He wasn’t the sort of man who needed to surround himself with an entourage, or more than the one bodyguard – the one whose presence wouldn’t have given Nureyev pause about coming here, given the situation, but who nonetheless he was glad appeared to be offworld at present – but he’d expected at the least a handful of staffers, the minimum number a politician would need to keep on retinue, or at least some security.

 

The lack of any visible uniforms may have been surprising, but it was no indication that security weren’t there. They may have been evading his vision, but he was better than anyone at evading, so as long as they stayed out of each other’s way, he should –

 

A metal claw grasped his collar. _Ah_ , there it was.

 

He twisted free, and disappeared into a room he could reach quickly enough but not too nearby as to be obvious. One wall of it was entirely glass, its panes clear but elaborately patterned and carved to resemble a figure that anyone in the galaxy would recognise. Rainbows refracted through the lines of the Homeless Hero’s face and the swirls of her hair, dazzling starbursts exploding along her armour so the entire room was washed with the light of the setting sun, and he melted into the shadows.

 

The door slid open with the softest of swishes, and there was no sound of footsteps alighting, but he could see the figure entering through the spiralling rainbows. It didn’t travel far from the door, make any effort to approach him, only stood there waiting. He could play this game.

 

 _‘Target: identified._ ’ a soft voice announced. It wasn’t unexpected. There was a record of Moses Krasnaya’s travel to Hyperion City, and his appeal for entrance to Newtown to talk to the business mogul and trailblazing politician he aspired to emulate, even though he’d never expected that entrance to be granted. He settled further into the shadows of the room and waited, watching the dust motes on the floor spiralling in the kaleidoscope of the Martian sunset spreading across all of the room but his hiding place. He could make his way out even through the array of splintered colour, but for now, it was always easier to hide in the dark.

 

‘ _Target is: Peter Nureyev_. _’_

 

Well, _that_ was unexpected. He had planned for a lot of potential outcomes and directions that this mission could go in – he wouldn’t be much of an assassin or revolutionary or whatever capacity he had come here in, something a little too nebulous to find an exact name for, if he hadn’t come prepared with plans for an array of eventualities – but possibly the only thing he hadn’t considered was _his name_ being in any way involved.

 

‘ _Directive is: do no harm.’_

 

So, it could be substantially worse, he thought while he pushed down the panic threatening to rise in him. He wondered wildly for a moment if Juno had passed on his identity to Mayor O’Flaherty; he evidently, from his slightly softened scowl in the background of streams, and his willing proximity to and protection of the Mayor, trusted him. But Juno wouldn’t do that. He had to believe that. And besides, none of his research yielded anything on where Juno had disappeared to for their few weeks together last year – or, somewhat concerningly, the last few weeks before now, but he wasn’t going to add another issue to his immediately pressing list of concerns at this moment – so he was clearly keeping the events of that period close to his chest. The only conclusion he could reasonably draw, with the logic he was fighting to keep at the forefront of his mind over the panic and paranoia clawing its way up his throat, was that he had underestimated Ramses O’Flaherty.

 

He edged a little along the wall, slinking easily between the few patches of dark outside of the rippling colours. He had no intention of making it to the door, and the – _whatever_ it was waiting for him there, but his interest in an escape route from the building had scaled back rapidly now in favour of his need to find out exactly what the _hell_ was going on and _how_ Ramses O’Flaherty knew his name, and, more pressingly, exactly what he might intend to do with that information. He knew that men like that didn’t go about obtaining knowledge that difficult to find without knowing exactly how they planned to use it. Nureyev just needed to find that out, and go from there as to how to stop... whatever the plan was, from being carried out. If he could evade the _thing_ that knew his name, but at least didn’t plan on hurting him, he should be able to make his way to the Mayor’s inner sanctum, and from there… _converse_ with him was perhaps an overly genteel and euphemistic way of putting it, and formulate a new plan for this turn of events.

 

He turned his head just barely towards the doorway, to see if there was any potential to simply slip past its metal guard, and it _wasn’t there_. Ah.

 

Metal claws landed on him, one gripping his arm tightly enough that if he tried to wriggle out from the thing's grasp then he’d almost certainly break it, the other tightening around the base of his neck, as another one materialised on his other side to grab his other arm.

 

‘ _Message: Mayor O’Flaherty requests your presence_.’

 

‘You can inform Mayor O’Flaherty from me that it’s very inconsiderate to describe a directive to someone being held captive as a request, and I’m less than inclined to acquiesce graciously to it.’ he informed the one on his left. It wasn’t how Moses Krasnaya talked at all, certainly not to his hero, but that had suddenly stopped being a concern.

 

The grip tightened further on his arms and neck, enough to bruise, the joints of the metal fingers catching in the material of his shirt and stretching it almost to the point of tearing.

 

‘Careful,’ he snapped. ‘That’s Venusian lace, and cost probably about as much as your manufacturing did.’ It was a trivial concern, and a useless thing to say, but it made him feel a little better to insult… a pair of chunks of metal. He really was scraping the barrel for any kind of sense of advantage here.

 

‘ _Message: Mayor O’Flaherty requests your presence. User: Peter Nureyev, Mayor O’Flaherty requests your presence.’_

 

‘Well, when you put it like _that_ , it’s still not what I’d call a request, but one I suppose it’s seeming increasingly less likely that I can avoid complying with.’

 

Nureyev didn’t struggle as they marched him from the room and down the corridor; there would be no point, and though this wasn’t the ideal manner of travel, it seemed he was still going to arrive at his planned destination just the same, and he would rather do so with as much dignity as was available to him under the circumstances. He affected a look of disinterest, a veneer that normally wouldn’t take more than a flicker of effort to pull up, but these circumstances did make the matter rather more difficult. _How_ , and _why_ , did Mayor O’Flaherty know his name?

 

He was manhandled towards a set of doors that looked just as, if not more, fortified than the gates to Newtown did. The Mayor was clearly a man who valued his privacy; he’d expected as much and come prepared to break in, but this was at least going to save him a decent amount of effort. In circumstances that a person more prone to despair might describe as dire, he’d take any benefits from it that could be found. He stared up at the doors and the intercom over them, forcing calm as vehemently as he could, both to feel and project it.

 

‘ _Mayor O’Flaherty. You have an appointment, with the citizen known as: –’_

 

‘It’s been made abundantly clear that you know my name,’ Nureyev informed the expectantly pulsing intercom, ‘so I clearly don’t need to repeat it for your benefit.’

 

‘ _Would you like me to send them in._ ’

 

His captors clearly received some kind of response he wasn’t privy to, and the doors slid open and he was pushed into the room, only managing not to stumble due to his extraordinary and hard-earned level of grace. He straightened up, smoothed his clothing a little, and tried to look unconcerned with the increasingly concerning situation.

 

The man behind the desk looked smaller than he did on the streams, and older. People usually did; Nureyev, or rather various aliases, had met numerous people after seeing their images broadcast across the galaxy, so that wasn’t surprising to him. What was surprising was how very frail the Mayor was, hunched over his desk like he was wilting, like that was the most upright he could manage to be. His skin, visibly wrinkled in the streams, was greying and stretched taut over bones that looked like they were straining to burst out of him. With Nureyev’s entrance, though, Ramses pulled himself further upright, even though in his state Nureyev could practically hear the screaming objections of his body. At the first sight of company – an audience – Ramses seemed to expand.

 

‘Please,’ Ramses gestured expansively, to the chair opposite his desk and the room at large, ‘have a seat.’ His voice was the same gravelly wheeze as it was in the streams, but there was a raw, grating edge to it, as if every word took a great effort to dredge up from his lungs. His tone, though, was easy and nonchalant, underlain with the same gravitas and earnestness as his speeches. Nureyev had met many people who habitually projected an image – he didn’t consider himself among them, because his aliases were far more immersive than anything so pedestrian, but it was something he could relate to. He’d met very few people, though, who spoke in conversation in the same way they did while speechifying; he was rapidly gaining the impression, even more so than his extensive research had prepared him, that he’d met very few people like Ramses O’Flaherty in many ways.

 

Ramses gave a dry, rasping chuckle, with an underlying wetness to it, and it was becoming more apparent by the minute that this was a very ill man. ‘You’ll forgive an old man for not standing for you, but I’m afraid the old joints aren’t always up to what they used to be.’ Nureyev having made no move to sit, Ramses inclined his head slightly towards the chair. The gesture, and everything about Ramses’ posture and expression, was as genial and polite as he’d been since Nureyev’s entrance, at odds with the circumstances, but something about the certainty in his eyes was making it clear now that it was not a request. Nureyev had expected as much.

 

Not being particularly eager for the return of the robots and further manhandling, he hooked an ankle around the leg of the offered chair to draw it out, and took a seat in one fluid motion. Moses Krasnaya was bumbling, awkward, nothing like this graceful, but Ramses knew he wasn’t talking to Moses Krasnaya. Nureyev had been in situations before when jobs had gone awry, and the mark either became or was already aware that he wasn’t who he claimed to be; he’d never, though, been in a situation before this where the mark knew exactly who he was, no matter what they may have believed, or he had allowed them to believe.

 

He had planned ahead, of course, for a series of scenarios, but none of them had involved actually _talking_ with Ramses; at least not as himself. Moses Krasnaya had been going to effuse admiringly, and probably at great length, about how revolutionary and galaxy-changing the Mayor’s plans for Hyperion City were, and flatter Ramses into revealing more. Nureyev knew it was unlikely that a man who held his identity so close to his chest would outright _tell_ him anything, accidentally or otherwise, but unleashing a stream of excited questions would allow him to observe how he reacted physically, and draw from that. They were far beyond any chances of that conversation. Nureyev had planned for searching the Mayor’s office, his desk, his papers and computer and comms, and for interrogating him if he needed any more information. He wasn’t squeamish when it came to dictators. He had no idea, though, how to conduct a conversation – which in itself was an optimistic view of the current situation – between the Mayor of Hyperion City and a man with a name long-dead, save one brief revival.

 

Still, he was nothing if not adaptable.

 

Ramses had made no move to ask him any questions, only stared at him quizzically, and Nureyev was already on the back foot in this conversation. He wasn’t going to wait to be spoken to.

 

‘Does Detective Steel know you’re dying?’ His tone was mild, conversational; if that was how Ramses wanted to play it, Nureyev had no objection to maintaining the façade.

 

Ramses laughed, that grating wheeze again. ‘Juno is, as you say, a detective. We’ve had rather too many more pressing matters to attend to, to have discussed it forthright yet, but I’m sure the evidence of my … state hasn’t escaped him anymore than it has you.’

 

Nureyev filed that thought away. Ramses wasn’t lying to Juno about this, at least; but Nureyev knew better than anyone that fostering an appearance of complete, guileless openness was one of the easiest ways to conceal deception. He had to believe that Ramses was playing a game with Juno; he may not have seen him for a year, and he knew that Juno was as changed by what they went through together as he was, and Nureyev didn’t know the full scope of what other circumstances could have affected him, since then or before. But the detective he used to know wasn’t someone who would stand behind the Guardian Angel of Hyperion City. He didn’t, though, know Juno anymore.

 

‘And does he know what you’re doing here?’

 

Ramses looked away from him, and started studiously shuffling through his papers. It was the first time since Nureyev’s entrance that he’d broken eye contact at all, and dropped his joviality. ‘If he doesn’t by now, he will soon. You know him. You know he’s never taken anyone else’s word for anything; I suppose he wouldn’t be much of a detective if he did. He’s out … _investigating_ my city right now. I’m sure he’ll share his opinions with me when he returns.’

 

It wasn’t shame; he was still sitting as tall and proud as his frail body would allow.  It was, however, uncertainty. Not in his plans, whatever regime he was imposing on Hyperion, of course; Ramses didn’t strike Nureyev as a man who doubted himself at all once he’d set his mind to something, and certainly wouldn’t allow that doubt to become even slightly apparent to anyone else. But he doubted Juno’s approval, and he clearly valued it. Not enough to change any plans he’d set in motion, almost certainly, but enough that he was desperate to win it, and unsure if he would.

 

Nureyev latched onto that, with more relief than he should have allowed himself to feel on any matter pertaining to Juno Steel. He shouldn’t have needed to believe so much that Juno wasn’t fully allied with Ramses, but the idea of Juno standing behind a regime had caused him more fear than he’d cared to admit to himself. The idea of Juno having changed that much, or of not having known him as well as he’d believed. Everything about this situation had thrown Nureyev off balance too much already; he needed something stable. He shouldn’t have ever doubted that Juno’s overblown sense of justice would be it.

 

The thought, though, of Juno being out there in Ramses’s city caused the bottom to drop out of Nureyev’s stomach. He may not have known what was happening out there, but the last of his information on Juno had placed him in the Outer Rim. Comfort in this situation was scarce, and all he’d had was the knowledge that he wouldn’t run into him here – because wouldn’t _that_ just be the most farcical possible conclusion to what was already shaping itself into a spectacular failure on his part – and that Juno was far from the rebuilding of his city in an all-too-familiar image, and THEIA units maintaining whatever Ramses decided peace looked like, and whatever else was going on in Newtown.

 

He feigned calm disinterest. He was good at that. ‘And what, exactly, are you hoping for him to find there?’

 

He wasn’t really expecting that he’d get any answers, at least not anything other than vague talking around facts while spinning idealistic rhetoric. But Ramses, against expectations, told him everything about what was happening in Newtown.

 

Nureyev had theorised, had feared, had been prepared for any number of ways that a government can frame a coercive stranglehold on liberty and the brutality to enforce it as a service to its citizens. He had never, though, heard anything like what Ramses had done to the people of Newtown.

 

He sat in predatory stillness, his hands aching to reach for his knives and pounce, while Ramses expounded on the revolutionary nature of the THEIA Soul in reshaping a broken society in a broken city into something where people were allowed to be their best selves. He framed it as a paradise. He framed the ultimate violation and control as being the ideal way to a freedom that his citizens’ own free will had denied them. Nureyev listened while Ramses kept circling back to how essential it was to prove himself, not to his citizens – after all, why would he need to, now he was the arbiter of their thoughts? – or other governments throughout the rest of the galaxy, but to Juno.

 

‘I want to show him how this can be, will be, _has to be_ , a _force for good_!’ Ramses gesticulated wildly while he spoke, his voice dragging itself out of the wheeze to a booming projection with all the conviction and grandeur behind his statement. Nureyev recognised the gestures as those of a man who has learned how a character would move, how to punctuate his words with impressive motions to drive home his point, rather than those of someone who was habitually physically expressive. He also recognised, despite Ramses’ tone and cadence being those of someone making a speech rather than having a conversation, that he believed wholeheartedly what he was saying. Nureyev recognised men like this, and recognised that there was nothing more dangerous than a liar with a cause. And no one more vulnerable to that than an idealist.

 

His heart ached for Juno, in a different way than usual, and he wondered for the first time if his detective might not have been better off for leaving him. He could have warned him.

 

He also knew that Juno, reluctant idealist or not, was clever enough and mistrustful enough that he wouldn’t have missed warning signs that Nureyev would have seen, and if he had looked past them or hadn't see them at all, it was because he had wanted to. Nureyev could understand wanting to believe in something, needing to hold onto that as a part of yourself. After all, he’d been really nothing more than a neverending cycle of masks in between leaving Mag behind and meeting Juno. Belief solidified a person, he understood that better than anyone, and he knew that Juno’s sense of himself had been wavering. He could only speculate as to why Juno had left, but he was different after losing an essential part of himself, and Nureyev could bear him no blame for latching onto something else so that he could climb back into the lines of himself he’d been slipping away from.

 

Part of Nureyev, the part that was so easy to slip into and let the rest – the trappings, or at least that was all they’d been before – fall away, to leave only the part that was all coldly calculated plans and fluid movements and swift justice all carried out in fractions of seconds and the barest flash of a blade – that part wanted Ramses dead for taking advantage of Juno’s slipping away from himself and giving him a lie to hold onto. But the rest of him, the Peter Nureyev who was buried with the intention of never emerging again, until Juno had reanimated him, couldn’t muster the anger to sustain that initial reaction through. He understood Ramses better than he ever wanted to, lying to serve the ideal of a greater good that was never even questioned, and he didn’t want to kill over that again.

 

Besides, any reunion with Juno was going to be awkward in the very best case scenario, and Nureyev didn’t imagine it would help at all if he murdered his employer first. _And_ , that shadowy part of him murmured, killing Ramses was Juno’s right, and not his to take before the object of his manipulation got the chance.

 

So Nureyev only arched a perfect eyebrow and responded in the mildest voice he had, his easy mark, guileless enough to be below suspicion, practically begging to be a stooge voice – if one still layered with the danger that there was no point in attempting to conceal from this man who knew his name –, ‘And you think I’m the best person to convince our dear detective of that? If you know as much about me as you claim, you’ll know I’m not the greatest proponent of regimes.’

 

Ramses slammed his fist on the table, and Nureyev kept the mildest interest on his face as his glass trembled, sending ripples through the amber liquid therein, and his papers fluttered, threatening to upend their endless stacks. Ramses had to know that Nureyev was not an easy man to intimidate; this was just further grandstanding, and it wasn’t even for his benefit.

 

‘It is _not a regime_ , it is _allowing_ people to be _good_! And besides,’ he seemed to calm a little. ‘That wasn’t what I had in mind.’

 

No, Nureyev hadn’t really imagined it was, but it had been nice to pretend that they were having a civil, if barely, conversation.

 

He quirked an eyebrow again, and resettled himself in his chair, crossing his legs and folding his hands over one another to sit demurely in his lap. ‘And I don’t suppose you’d see fit to tell me what that might be? We both know, Mr Mayor, that you’re on a tight schedule, and as charming an interlude as this has been, I think it would benefit both of us if you would tell me your plan, as I assume that’s why I’m here, and _stop wasting both our time_.’ It was satisfying to let the sharpness slide back into his words.

 

‘I know he left you.’ Ramses told him, reclining in his chair even as another rattling cough shook his body and made him seem more the frail old man desperately trying to cling to authority than the powerful figure he no doubt imagined.

 

If he thought that the mention of that was going to hurt Nureyev, he was sorely mistaken. He wasn’t over it, of course he wasn’t over it, but it would take more than someone else saying the words to get close to touching that wound. Only he got to prod at the raw edges of the memory of Juno’s midnight flit. Ramses may have been the only other person who knew about the event, but he still didn’t have any ability to hurt him with it.

 

‘I thought you might, yes.’

 

‘You are a dangerous man.’ Ramses stated, looking more and more smug in his posture. He was settling in for a speech, and Nureyev was growing bored of playing the captive audience. He spread his hands expansively, and didn’t shrug – Peter Nureyev and any one of the characters he wears never did anything so inelegant and awkward as shrugging – but demonstrated with a fluid movement of his arms and shoulders, how abundantly aware he was of that fact.

 

‘Your point, Mr Mayor?’

 

‘You don’t see how your _lifestyle_ , the violence and the thieving and the running away before ever seeing any of the consequences of your actions, might have affected his decision?’

 

Nureyev smirked, let Ramses get a glimpse of his sharp teeth. ‘Your understanding of crime is very interesting, and in no way applicable to me. And yes, I had considered it.’ He’d considered every possible explanation, and came back to that one as a reasonable one more often than not, but that still didn’t mean that Ramses throwing it at him had any power behind it.

 

Ramses’ weathered face split open into a smile, and Nureyev recognised the danger in it, of the giddy triumph grounded in an overwhelming sense of moral righteousness behind it.

 

‘You don’t see, then, how you might help serve as the perfect example of how much _better_ the THEIA Soul can make people? Who it can allow you to be?’

 

Nureyev didn’t say anything. Ramses leant forward in his chair, the same fire in his eyes as when he was roaring his speeches on streams or across the desk from him minutes ago, but his voice was pitched lower, almost friendly – not in the same genial display as he’d been putting on earlier, but genuine, like he really thought he could reach an understanding with Nureyev.

 

‘Juno is a good judge of character, and even if he left you, he must have seen something in you to work with you before that. Don’t you think it might convince him of the _good_ we could do, to show him a version of you he wouldn’t have to walk away from?’

 

He half-stood from his chair to lean further forward, the frailties of his ill, elderly body left behind, unable to keep up with the force of his passion and conviction. ‘ _Peter_ –’ Nureyev had far too much control over his body to flinch, but everything him in him twisted away in revulsion from Ramses trying to address him by a name no one had called him by in over twenty years. ‘Isn’t this what _you_ would want, too? To show him that there’s another way, a _better_ way for things to be, by showing him how it could make you? You would still be _you_ , but _good_. You would be honest, you would be safe, you wouldn’t need to _want_ to be violent or a thief or a liar. You would be _better_.’

 

 _Domesticated_ , Ramses didn’t say, but Nureyev felt the word crawl up his spine anyway. His own power, his freedom and others’, was the only belief he’d never doubted even throughout the faith he’d ever had in anything else crumbling. Hyperion City’s Mayor clearly didn’t place as high a value on it as a lapsed revolutionary turned thief did; or maybe he did, and that was why he was so determined to suppress it. If he saw people as only the sum of their potential actions – their potential for good, he claimed, but that was something the Mayor trusted only himself to define for his citizens – then he believed absolutely in his right to control that sum coming out as one for good. Ramses looked at his citizens and saw their free will and their power, whatever they could manage to snatch for themselves in this city, as the root of the problem. He could eliminate environmental factors in those decisions, but after all that rebuilding and pouring money into it, humanity was what stood in the way of his vision of a utopia. And humans, being beyond training like animals, meant his only means of doing that was to suppress the primal instinct to do all the things humans did. Ramses O’Flaherty didn’t want to govern a city of people; he wanted to write a happy ending for characters in another Northstar fable.

 

Nureyev had come here thinking of the people of Brahma living in fear, the same anger at how no one deserved to live like that. The people of Old Town weren’t living in fear, because they weren’t even able to begin to feel that fear.

 

Nureyev was afraid of Ramses O’Flaherty, but at least he was able to be afraid of him for now.

 

It took some effort to force the same calm disinterest into his voice. Even knowing his name, Ramses hadn’t been able to dislodge his mask, but now it was somewhat shaken. He pulled it back up, pulled the veneer of belief in his own control over himself again. ‘Well, if that will be all, Mr Mayor, I don’t think we’re going to come to an agreement today. A pleasure, of course, to make your acquaintance.’ He began to rise from his chair.

 

‘Of course,’ Ramses continued, his voice still low but with none of the intensity, now with the forced airiness he didn’t do half as naturally as Nureyev, but he was a man subtlety clearly eluded. ‘I imagine the reformation potential might be of interest to New Kinshasa, as well.’

 

Nureyev resumed his seat with deliberate slowness, his customary ease and grace intact even as his knees threatened to give out.

 

‘I don’t believe they go in much for reformation there, Mr Mayor.’

 

Ramses chuckled wetly, not trying to conceal the hacking cough crawling out midway. His self-satisfaction was too evident to require the performance of his big booming laugh. They both knew he was triumphant here.

 

‘Maybe not, maybe not. But they’d certainly be interested in the return of a man wanted for over two decades now. I wouldn’t even have to send you back. With a Soul, you’d turn yourself in.’

 

‘I have to say, Mr Mayor, you’re not really selling me on the merits of the THEIA Soul any further.’

 

Ramses didn’t look at him, just began reshuffling his papers. ‘I don’t have to convince you. It would have made matters easier, but only for you.’

 

There was no point in resisting as the THEIAs dragged him out of his chair, but he struggled anyway even as the tiny metal chip settled against the base of his skull. It just rested there, not activating to do _whatever_ it was going to do to him, crawl into his brain and rewrite him, right away. Ramses, looking up from his papers with the barest interest, still had some theatre to carry out.

 

‘There’s no prison that has been able to hold me,’ Nureyev told him fiercely, turning his creeping desperation into the same brand of fire that Ramses relied on. Maybe it would appeal to him enough to keep him talking a little longer, long enough that he’d have time to formulate more escape plans. ‘I have no reason to believe that this is going to be the first thing I can’t escape.’ He believed it, because he had to. Belief in himself had carried him this far, and would carry him through this.

 

‘Maybe not,’ Ramses told him, looking at him levelly over steepled fingers. ‘But I have no reason to believe you will when you won’t _want_ to.’

 

He stared into Nureyev’s eyes, the same iridescent blue fire bright in them. ‘ _Protect him_. I know it won’t be the Soul that has to tell you to do that.’

 

The tiny circle pressed to his neck _spun_ , scythed straight through skin, burrowing into the flesh, into the very centre of him. Tendrils snaked out to encircle him, wrapping him in a chokehold

_give up_

and there was nothing he could see as he looked down, frantically scanning his body, but they kept reaching, shooting through him

_give up_

 

Shocks of electricity pulsed through him, crackling along every nerve ending, and it was too much

_give up_

not the same, but still too familiar

_give up_

because it was all for Juno and that was why he _couldn’t_ allow himself to

_give up_

and why he had to

_give up_

try to hold onto that part of him

_give up_

that he spent most of his time avoiding

_give up_

because it was the part

_give up_

of him that Juno _needed_ him to not

_give up_

 

_Give up_

_Give up_

_Give up control_

 

 _Overriding user muscular control_.

The shockwaves riding through him lessened, ebbed away, but his body was still frozen, held taut and unmoving, until it wasn’t. Until he was stepping out of the grasp of the THEIAs and moving on his own, but his limbs were alien to him, even as he could feel them moving while something else, something crackling and electric and foreign, had settled inside them.

 

His willpower was the only thing

_give up control_

he had ever believed in enough

_give up control_

to hold onto

_give up control_

The only thing

_give up control_

he could

_give up control to the THEIA Soul_

put his faith in

_give up control to the THEIA Soul_

except

_give up_

_give up_

_give up_

_give up control_

_give up control to the THEIA Soul_

 

Except.

 

The only thing he had ever believed in more than himself was Juno Steel.

 

_Overriding user neural control._

 

_Give up_

he couldn’t

_give up_

on Juno

_give up_

_give up_

_give up control to the THEIA Soul_.

 

_The THEIA Soul is now online._

 

 

In the end, it wasn’t all that different from sliding into another persona. And he knew how to do that. Smooth over the edges of his mind, and focus single-mindedly on the end goal. There was nothing and nobody that could shake him now.

 

User Peter Nureyev slipped out of the building on top of the hill as easily as Moses Krasnaya had slipped in. Moving with the same subtle grace and determined attention he brought to every identity he’d worn before now, he made his way into Newtown, and melted into the crowds of residents, making his way to a quiet side street, and into the small park nestled between two buildings. He waited, hidden in the imposing shadow of the Andromeda statue, with no impatience to tug at the edges of his mind and distract from his goal, until he could hear the sound of hesitant footsteps down the path, barely audible over the quiet rippling of the fountains, before coming to rest in front of the statue. So close to his hiding place that he could reach out and touch him.

 

It was just the two of them here: one motionless and watchful, unseen in the cloak of the purple twilight, unnoticed beside the infinitely more arresting spectacle of the monument; one mumbling the words of the statue’s inscription, before seeming to fragment, shattering outwardly into a fractured mixture of hysterical laughter and sobbing, whispering a threat and a promise to a man who wasn’t there. No other THEIA Soul Users or THEIA Peace units were needed for this; he could do the job better. The Mayor had trusted him on that. If his heart stuttered a little and spikes of something threatened to surge under the surface of his focus on his mission at the sight of him, _his_ , not his, Juno – _no,_ at the sight of _User Juno Steel_ , _target: identified_ – then the Soul glided over it and set everything settled again, set him calm and resolute again.

 

He blended easily into the crowds again when they finally left the park, though his practice at concealing himself when he didn’t want to be seen was hardly necessary in the face of his mark’s overwhelming attention being directed at his destination, at the confrontation it was plain to see he’d already started in his mind.

 

User Juno Steel’s hair was longer than it was the last time they had seen each other, curling almost to the edge of his collar and brushing against the dead THEIA Soul clumsily affixed to the back of his neck, that was costing so much of his effort to not cringe away from. User Peter Nureyev had more insight into him than other THEIA Soul Users, of course, but the purpose in his walk and the rigidity in his posture would set him apart from all the other Newtown residents to any observer. Of course, there were’t any others. They were all focused on maintaining their own happiness and peace in their community. Their purpose would come, in time, but for now, User Peter Nureyev was the only one among them with a task ahead of him.

 

He followed his mark, who instantly shedded the façade of contented THEIA Soul User as soon as he was up the hill and bursting through the doors of the City Hall, ripping the dead Soul away from his neck and flinging it away from him with enough revulsion that his arm was still shuddering with it as he strode ahead, radiating righteous anger, restored every inch to the enraged detective on a doomed quest to try to do the right thing. The discarded Soul skittered across the floor, coming to rest near where User Peter Nureyev stood after dissolving into the shadows once they were into the building. He moved imperceptibly, not even touching the silence or darkness in the building, to pick it up. He rolled it between the pads of his fingers while he stood at a safe distance from the detective currently alternating between hammering furiously on the doors to the Mayor’s office demanding entry, and much shorter bursts of standing outside shuffling his feet and gritting his teeth in some facsimile of patience, before eventually deciding to force his way in by prying the doors apart.

 

He watched User Juno Steel burst into the office, shouting abuse. User Juno Steel had a moment of hesitation and the horrible, creeping realisation was displayed all over his face, even before he discovered Mayor O’Flaherty’s body, jostled it roughly and with increasing desperation, and User Peter Nureyev watched with detached interest for the exact moment User Juno Steel gave up on pretending to himself that the evidence in front of him couldn’t be true.

 

The Mayor had been alive when User Peter Nureyev had left for Newtown, his bright burning energy and determination of so short a time ago incongruous with the small figure now slumped over his desk. The sight didn’t shake him from his focus. The Mayor wasn’t what he was here for, after all, even if that was what someone else might have come here for once.

 

He watched User Juno Steel desperately examine the body, tear the room apart searching, rifle through the papers with none of the reverent care that the Mayor had handled them, leaving them scattered over the desk and cascading onto the floor. He watched him talk to a rapidly cooling corpse, rage at it, grab and shake it even though he had to be far past the point of realising that he’d receive no response.

 

User Peter Nureyev dropped the dead Soul. It clattered against the floor, rolling away out of the shadows, going unnoticed even if the sound could be heard in the office. He retrieved a working Soul from his pocket, unusually empty – he had no need for his knives or any of the usual detritus in there, and had given them to the THEIA Peace units to dispose of with all the other confiscated dangerous and unnecessary objects – other than the chip, a pair of what the information scrolling through his head informed him were the standard issue HCPD handcuffs, and the stun blaster – set to only the lowest voltage – he had been given for the worst case scenario, if he were presented with levels of resistance preventing any alternatives. His target was at his most vulnerable, collapsed in a heap on the floor beside the Mayor’s body in his chair and gripping onto the desk like he didn’t trust his knees to hold him. It was the best possible moment to strike.

 

Peter Nureyev didn’t move.

 

 _Error, error, error_.

 

Pressure surged through the chip at the nape of his neck, gripping his skull in a crushing vice. Pulses of electricity wracked his whole body, as the endless _error error error_ echoed through every part of him. Nureyev’s body stood rigid and still as more and more shocks raced through him, as he gritted his teeth so hard he could almost hear them cracking, as _ERROR ERROR ERROR_ blared in his head and ignited every nerve in his body.

 

In the office, Juno had risen from beside Ramses’ chair and was on his comms, pacing, panic rising in his voice as whoever was on the other end gave him what had to be, judging from his reaction, the worst possible news. Dimly, through the volts shrieking through him and the refrain of _ERROR ERROR ERROR_ , Nureyev could hear snatches of a broadcast in the same voice reverberating around the inside of his skull, the echoing ticking of a countdown, the trembling in Juno’s voice as he visibly tried to force himself into the calmest he could be for whomever he was talking to.

 

He didn’t know how the Soul possibly could contain more electricity to send another pulse through him, or how his body wasn’t ripped apart by it as the surge screamed through him. His mind was splintering under the volts burning along his every particle, and the Soul had to be the only thing holding his body together. He didn’t think, with all the willpower in the world, he would have been able to stop himself from screaming if the Soul hadn’t choked it off in his throat before it could risk escaping him and alerting Juno to his presence.

 

Juno’s comms call had ended, and he’d made his way out of the office with a single glance behind him, but he hadn’t seen Nureyev standing paralysed in the long shadows stretching along the corridor.

 

Nureyev couldn’t breathe, couldn’t think, wasn’t made of anything more than pain and _error ERROR ERROR_ , but some part of him he couldn’t consciously reach had to still be fighting it, because he managed to choke out a ragged whisper.

 

‘Juno.’

 

It was barely a breath, but Juno whirled around to face where he was held immobile and alight with stabbing sparks of blinding agony. His eye met Nureyev’s and widened, his pupil dilating so much it eclipsed any colour in the iris.

 

_ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR ERROR_

 

_The THEIA Soul is back online._

 

The pulses began to ebb away in waves, until he could almost draw a full breath.

 

_Overriding user muscular control._

 

 _Target is: Juno Steel_.

 

He was moving faster than even he ever could if he were the one in control of his body, leaping towards Juno before he could even turn to run from him. Nureyev’s taller frame and longer limbs were trapping him against the wall, pressing their bodies together to leave Juno no escape from him, from the THEIA Soul he was brandishing in the hand he couldn’t access, couldn’t stop moving inexorably closer. Juno’s hand was wrapped around his wrist tight enough to leave bruises Nureyev couldn’t feel, trying to force him back, but he wasn’t strong enough to hold him back. His hand was moving closer and closer to Juno’s face, what little light from the shining city beyond was making its way through the windows glinting off the metal chip.

 

‘Give up control.’ Nureyev couldn’t stop the words falling from his numb lips, and can’t stop the movement of his hand towards Juno. He was close enough to Juno that he could feel his breath on his face, coming in quick gasps as he was shouting something Nureyev couldn’t hear over the _give up give up give up_ ricocheting through his head.

 

‘Give up control.’ He could hear his own voice layered over with the same voice that was inside him, giving him the same orders. He didn’t know if it was just in his head, if Juno could hear that it wasn’t his voice. It wasn’t him.

 

‘Give up control, User Juno Steel.’

 

_Juno._

 

Their hands were pressed together as Juno tried desperately to force him back, the Soul in Nureyev’s hand giving a throb of electricity as it made contact with Juno’s skin.

 

‘Give up control to the THEIA Soul.’

 

_Don’t give up on me._


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> _Maybe there were times when he imagined what his life,their life, would look like if he'd made different decisions, but he didn't let himself entertain the thought of any circumstances under which they might meet again, and how it would be, what he might say, what Nureyev might say. He'd closed the door on that when he closed... well, there was no point going down that road again._
> 
> _He didn't picture it. But if he did, it wouldn't have looked like this. Even when he dreamed about Nureyev, and all the things he should have said, and all the awful things Juno feared hearing from him, nothing was ever like this._
> 
> _Juno didn't know if he was meant to see Nureyev again, but it was never meant to be like this._
> 
>  
> 
>  
> 
> Absolutely nothing that's Juno Steel has had to deal with since Ramses' plan for Newtown was put into motion has been part of the plan. Even so, having the one that got away (well, that may be misrepresenting who did the getting away, but still) show up, except instead of swooping into the rescue he's both presenting the danger, and in need of rescuing himself - is bound to throw a lady.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So. That finale, right? Left me with no inclination to carry on anything diverging from it. Nevertheless, she persisted.
> 
> Obviously, I would be a monster if I were to want to change things and not have Rita save the day, even in canon divergence. So let's just say this takes place in a timeline where Juno has one more thing to deal with before he leaves the office, Rita shouts at him a bit for being late, and then everything else plays out exactly the same as it did in the finale, just a little bit later. Well, the THEIA situation, anyway.
> 
> Content warnings in the tags apply, but to be more specific: the violence is canon-typical, but, while it's absolutely not intimate partner violence, it's still Juno being physically hurt by something using Nureyev's body. So if that's an issue, I'd suggest giving it a miss.
> 
> More specifically, there's brief choking. If you'd prefer not to read that, but still want to read the fic, the end notes have specific notes on where it happens so you can skip that section.

As a rule, Juno tried very hard not to think about how meeting with Nureyev again would be. He wasn't ready to start hoping for that yet, and he knew he had no right. He'd really been working on learning to believe that he deserved the things he'd been telling himself he didn't for years, and yeah, it was hard, but he was getting there. Even at a slow crawl. Even if it really hadn't been that long since he'd even realised himself that he was allowed to want more.

 

That, though... that was different. That was something he really, genuinely didn't deserve, not after what he'd done to Nureyev. After leaving him like that, Juno didn't have a right to hope to see him again.  
  


And maybe there were times when, against his better judgement, he'd pictured seeing him. Times when it was too late to go home only to go straight back to the office, but he was out of cases, or not getting anywhere with a current one, and he couldn't take any new ones because he didn't know how to turn on the comms without Rita, times when he was at the bottom of a glass and didn't know what to do but unlock his safe and reach into the corner for the letter, the once crumpled page worn smooth by countless rereads, and stare at that nearly illegible – but still somehow elegant – spidery scrawl, in faded ink that he didn't need to read the words of to remember what it says.

 

The smell of Nureyev's cologne was long gone from it.

 

So maybe there were times when he imagined what his life, _their_ life, would look like if he'd made different decisions, but he didn't let himself entertain the thought of any circumstances under which they might meet again, and how it would be, what he might say, what  _Nureyev_ might say. He'd closed the door on that when he closed... well, there was no point going down that road again.  
  


He didn't picture it. But if he did, it wouldn't have looked like this. Even when he dreamed about Nureyev, and all the things he should have said, and all the awful things Juno feared hearing from him, nothing was ever like  _this_ .

 

Juno didn't know if he was meant to see Nureyev again, but it was never meant to be like this.

 

It was never meant to be that long sinewy body pressed up so close against him again, his breath right against Juno's skin, pinning him into a corner with them both fumbling desperately, and one of those little metal nightmares in Nureyev's hand and another one controlling his movements.

 

The Martian sunset refracting through the windows glinted off the Soul in Nureyev's long fingers as Juno gripped his wrist and tried as hard as he could to shove him off.

 

Like this, Nureyev's strength was beyond anything Juno could match, even on a day when he hadn't gone without sleep or food or any time to process the whole hell he'd come home to. He couldn't fight him off. He writhed and shouted things he knew that Nureyev, the real him, couldn't hear, or if he could, couldn't do anything about. He dug his fingernails into the skin of Nureyev's wrist, gouging bloody crescents that did nothing to deter him bringing the Soul closer and closer, gritted his teeth and shoved as hard as he could, to no avail.

 

He couldn't do anything but stare Nureyev in the eyes, shouting to him to stop. It wasn't him, he knew it wasn't him, but those eyes were as bright as they ever were, through every alias, through everything they'd been to together, the last time he'd seen them looking at him filled with... something more. Something Juno was sure was reflected in his own eye looking back at him. Before they'd closed in sleep, and Juno had walked out on him. There was nothing of that in his eyes now. Their burning light was made of pure focus on one goal, of getting the Soul on Juno so that the same roots that had wrapped around his brain could take hold of him, too.

 

The last thing he wanted was to stun Nureyev, risk what happened with Mick happening again, but he couldn't risk the whole of Hyperion, the whole of Mars, maybe even the rest of the galaxy – not for one man. Not even for him. But was  _Nureyev,_ even if he wasn't really the one in his body, and it was his body Juno would be risking. He  _couldn't_ .

 

Juno reached for his blaster.

 

He didn't even get to fully draw it before Nureyev was on him, lifting him off his feet by the lapels of his jacket to slam him into the wall. Juno's head cracked back against it so hard he tasted blood in his mouth. He spat it out, clawed at Nureyev's hands to try to loosen his grip on him. His blood speckled Nureyev's glasses.  
  


Nureyev slammed him back down to the ground, his feet hitting it so hard his knees buckled briefly, but then his arm was pressing against Juno's throat, dragging him further upright until he was standing on the tips of his toes, pinned in place and fighting for balance while Nureyev's other hand was bringing the Soul closer. He choked and scrabbled uselessly at Nureyev's sleeve, trying to get enough purchase to push him off. The arm across his throat was pushing so hard that his vision was beginning to dim at the edges.

 

He couldn't fight him off. Nureyev towered over him, and Juno might normally have the advantage of the brute strength he'd spent a lifetime cultivating while the thief was practicing stealth and moving like a goddamn whisper, impossible and invisible – but everything was different with the Soul running the show. Nureyev was as hard and immovable like this as if he was made of the same metal as that tiny horror pulling the strings on his body.

 

Juno couldn't fight him. So he didn't.

 

He let his eye roll upwards into his head and went against his every instinct screaming to fight, in favour of forcing himself go limp, sagging until Nureyev's arm across his neck was the only thing holding him up. The pressure on his throat loosened just slightly and Nureyev stepped backwards a little, letting his hand with the Soul in it lower just a fraction, just for the moment while he readjusted his balance, but it was enough. Juno collapsed to the ground and then shoved his shoulder as hard as he could into Nureyev's knees.

 

It wouldn't be enough if the Soul were channelling its strength towards those muscles, but it had clearly decided that all of that was better directed towards his arms while he and Juno were struggling over the other Soul. As it was, it was enough to knock him off balance, stumbling backwards without any of that vulpine grace that there would be if Nureyev were the one in control of his own movements, and Juno used that to dive away from him, crawling away because there wasn't the time to get to his feet. He couldn't overpower Nureyev, and he definitely couldn't outrun him. He probably couldn't hide, either, but he could find cover and... work out a better solution from there. He clambered to his feet to launch himself back into Ramses' office, hitting the button on his way for the doors to shut behind him. He could hear Nureyev's body slam against them less than a second after they fully closed.

 

He pressed his back against the doors and slid down them to collapse in a heap on the floor. His whole body was shaking with the impact every time Nureyev threw himself against the doors, every blow coming in impossibly quick succession. He didn't need any pauses to to catch his breath; the Soul only had one objective, and it would push Nureyev's body to whatever lengths it needed to in order to achieve it. Juno knew that the doors wouldn't keep him out for long; if Juno could force his way in, without a Soul powering his muscles, Nureyev certainly could. The Soul was probably only throwing him into the doors like this as some form of intimidation tactic, or to try to appeal to something in Juno by forcing him to listen to Nureyev's body being battered like this.

 

It was working.

 

But, Juno reminded himself, he'd already made every part of this nightmare even worse by believing it to be all about himself. Maybe Nureyev here, being one of the victims of the THEIA Soul, was nothing more than a coincidence. Not that he believed in such a thing – wouldn't be much of a private eye if he did – but Nureyev used to be someone who would travel the galaxy to try to take down a regime, even if that had been decades ago. But it wasn't so long ago, really, that Nureyev had been willing again to risk himself to try to prevent thousands of people being hurt. Juno had certainly changed over the last year, and even though the Nureyev in his mind was in constant stasis – preserved sleeping peacefully in that hotel room, hoping for – no, past that, completely confident in a happy ending that wasn't coming – he had to consider that he must have changed, too. But not that much, surely?

 

He had to believe that Nureyev was here for any reason other than him, and that one made more sense than anything else. That still didn't explain why he was  _here_ , in Ramses' sanctum, but that didn't mean that it was necessarily to use him against Juno.

 

Nureyev had stopped hurling himself into the doors now, at least. There was the awful squealing of metal, and Juno felt the doors parting slightly against where his back was pressed to the seam. He scrambled away, looking up at the gap appearing in the doors. Nureyev's long fingers were snaking through the tiny space, gripping onto the doors but not moving to push them apart yet. The metal was buckling under the pressure of his fingers. He could have been in the room by now, but he was still just out there. Waiting.

 

Waiting for what, Juno had no idea, but he knew that Nureyev could be in the room with him by now, once again trying to force the Soul on him.

 

A laugh bubbled up inside him, involuntary and inappropriate, because  _of course_ this was how it would end. How he had thought he would go out in a blaze of glory so long ago, and now here he was, getting another opportunity, now he'd finally realised it wasn't what he wanted.

 

'Don't –' Juno gasped. Even as the plea left him, he wasn't expecting it to yield any results, but his mind was racing too fast to keep up with the words spilling out of him. 'Please don't, Nur–' he somehow gained enough presence of mind to cut himself off just before the whole name slipped out.  _'Please,_ don't come in.'

 

Somehow, miraculously, the Soul heeded his words. He didn't dare to hope that it was Nureyev doing it himself, finding some thread of himself that would listen to Juno begging, but the slender fingers retreated from the crack in the doors.  
  


'We can talk,' Juno said, trying desperately to clutch at the edges of some semblance of a plan, like if he cast around for scraps wildly enough, one might materialise. 'Just – talk to me.'

 

There was silence on the other side of the doors. Through the small gap, Juno couldn't see Nureyev himself, only the eerily elongated shadow of him stretching along the floor. He braced himself, ready to leap up – hopefully his legs would be able to hold him by then – if Nureyev was about to come bursting into the room.

 

Instead, there was the soft sound of a body coming to rest against the doors, and then, through the chink in the doors, he could see Nureyev's back sliding down it, to sit how Juno had a few moments ago.

 

'We can talk, User Juno Steel.'

 

Juno didn't know how there was any air left in his lungs to dredge up the exhale of relief he let out, but it left him dizzy. Well, slightly more dizzy than he already had been, after the running and the fighting and the being choked, and the accompanying rush of adrenaline, and the sheer shock of seeing Nureyev again, here, like this.

 

He crawled back over to the doors, letting himself fall back against them. Through the small crack, he could feel the heat of Nureyev against his back, burning as hot as Mick had been. The Soul was setting him on fire from the inside, and Juno had to force back the bile rising in his throat to bring himself to speak.

 

'Why are you here?'

 

A stupid question, under the circumstances, but it was the one spiralling around and around in his head even over everything else.

 

There was silence for a moment, for long enough that Juno had given up on getting an answer, cursing himself for even asking. Then a laugh, a low chuckle that he imagined he could feel vibrating the door against him.

 

It was horrible, hearing the Soul force that familiar sound out of Nureyev.

 

'That's irrelevant now. I imagine you probably weren't expecting to see your better half again under these circumstances.'

 

The phrasing sent a volt of shock straight through Juno. He didn't know if it was the Soul accessing memories it had no right to, or Nureyev letting him know there was some of his presence still in there behind the Soul, or the Soul letting him know it knew – he didn't know how much information on Nureyev it had access to, but he knew those words were too close to the name that Nureyev would have guarded at any cost from whatever database was connected to the Souls. He didn't know how much information the web with Ramses at the centre had already caught on Nureyev, and he didn't know what to say to that, even if he were able to muster any response beyond the horror crawling up his throat to choke him into silence. He couldn't risk compromising Nureyev any more than he already had been.

 

That same laugh trickled through the doors between them and burrowed right under Juno's skin.

 

'Oh, Juno.' Was he imagining it, or was that familiar purr layered over with the metallic singing of the THEIA's voice? 'Come now. We both know you remember that letter.'

 

And this time it was definitely there, the robotic voice overlaying Nureyev's voice to the point almost of drowning it out. ' _Did you think the THEIA Spectrum didn't log the things you saw? Did you think you could keep it a secret, User Juno Steel? Did you never think who else you were showing his name to?_ '

 

The realisation was sickening. Juno still didn't know how much of this was about him, but whatever the motivation, he had handed Nureyev to Ramses and the Souls and whoever the hell else was involved. Even if this whole situation, Nureyev being here, came about by nothing more than truly horrible coincidence, he wouldn't be in this situation if it weren't for Juno. He'd given away Nureyev's name without even thinking about it.

 

He drew the jagged edges of a breath from lungs that barely knew how to hold any right now, and tried to bring with it some of the angry bravado that he needed right now. The Soul was making it clear that it wasn't Nureyev, and Juno could handle this a lot better when he was addressing an enemy. This whole scenario might be like nothing else, but he'd been backed into a corner plenty of times; and maybe going straight on the attack wasn't exactly a reliable solution to getting out of it, but it was the only way he knew how.

 

'Alright,  _THEIA_ ,' he spat. It might know Nureyev's name, but Nureyev wasn't the one Juno was talking to. 'What do you want?'

 

It used Nureyev's laugh again, just for a second, before switching back to the voice, and it was so jarring Juno felt the world tilting around him. ' _I want you to give up control, User Juno Steel. Give up control to the THEIA Soul._ '

 

Juno didn't turn around to look at Nureyev's face, because the thought of seeing the Soul moving his lips but not letting him have his own voice for this made him feel sick.

 

'Well, that's not happening.'

 

Nureyev's voice was back. 'Oh, Juno. You know that that's not up to you. You know I could be through these doors in a second if I wanted to.'

 

It wasn't him, Juno reminded himself, even if the moment he heard the voice again his heart hitched into his throat for a minute, thinking it had let Nureyev have it back, or that he could have somehow taken it back for himself. It was just using his voice again. The similar phrasing to what it had made Mick say earlier made it a little easier; it might have stolen others' voices to do it, but it was still the same little bug reading from a pre-programmed script.

Juno couldn't stop his mind going to whether Nureyev was locked away in there to hear it discussing how it had taken his name from him, because Juno hadn't taken enough care of the one thing the habitually anonymous thief had trusted him with.

 

Well. Not the only thing.

 

But he couldn't think about that now. Mick had said that he hadn't wanted what the THEIA made him say, but only afterwards, when he'd got himself back. So he could guess that Nureyev wasn't experiencing this as himself, for now. There  _would_ be a later, when he got himself back, when he could feel it, and maybe Juno could be there with him for it. He had to hold onto the knowledge that he could end this, him and Rita, because they  _had_ to, and doubting that even for a second wasn't an option.

 

He let out a shaky breath. 'So don't do that. Talk to me.'

 

'Why don't you ask me by my name, Juno?'

 

The answer to that was very simple; he couldn't bring himself to, even if the Soul already knew it, even if that was because of Juno. And the Soul knew that, and that was why it was trying to force it out of him.

 

'Talk to me,  _THEIA_ .' It was toying with him, but that didn't mean Juno was going to play along.

 

'No.'

 

It was worse in Nureyev's voice.

 

'No, you won't talk to me?'

 

The THEIA's voice slid back over Nureyev's. ' _Ask_ _**him** _ _, User Juno Steel._ '

 

Juno slammed a fist into the door, so hard he could feel it getting ready to swell up immediately after. He gritted his teeth. He had no choice.

 

He gathered what he could to do this. He was sure he would have to do harder to bring all of this to an end.

 

' _Fine_ . Talk to me,' he sucked in a breath through clenched teeth, before growling almost inaudibly. ' _User Peter Nureyev._ '

 

It was the closest he was willing to do for now, a concession to the Soul having Nureyev's name as well as his body and everything else, but making it clear that Juno wasn't about to pretend that he was addressing the real him.

 

When the response came, the THEIA's voice was still threaded in underneath Nureyev's, but only faintly. Just enough to let him know – what? Juno knew who he was talking to. He didn't know what point it was trying to make, but whatever it was, it sure as hell wasn't trying to do it subtly.  
  


'Let's talk, then. For now. You just wanted to  _talk_ with User Mick Mercury, and he's been offline for hours now. What did you do, Juno?'

 

He resisted the urge to punch the door again. 'Same thing I'm going to do to you, THEIA. Same thing I'm going to do for Nureyev, and for all the other people you're using. I gave him his brain back.'

 

And he was so close to not doing that, but he wasn't going to tell the Soul that it was Rita who actually freed Mick. That it was her who was going to free everyone else while Juno just tried to be the dumb muscle standing in between her and everything the two of them had to face off against. It was here with him, and he could only hope that there weren't more going after her, or that she was at least safe for now. But he wasn't going to send them her way if the THEIA thought for now that it was all him.

 

'Won't you tell me how you're going to do that, Juno?' The THEIA's voice drowned out Nureyev's again. ' _Tell me what you did, User Juno Steel_ .'

 

'No, goddammit.' he gritted out.

 

It didn't say anything back, and he was crawling away from the door again, adjusting into a crouch ready to jump back up to his feet if it was about to come climbing through, when –

 

'We could trade, Juno.'

 

'We could – what?'

 

That vulpine smile again, and Nureyev's voice was back. 'Questions, Detective. I imagine you have them. We could trade answers.'

 

Juno couldn't speak for a moment. He didn't understand what game was being played here, only that that he was being toyed with. The rapid switches between approaches were as erratic as Ramses' series of unfinished speeches, but everything about the fluidity with which it did so seemed so calculated and designed. He was almost as much a pawn to the Soul in this as Nureyev was; but he _wasn't_ , Juno had to remind himself, he was one of two people – the only one, as far as the Soul was concerned – who could beat it at this game.

 

It might be treating him like nothing more than a plaything, a puppet whose mind the strings hadn't reached yet, but one it was still able to force into its twisted dance, but it wouldn't be trying to make him feel powerless if it didn't know the stakes of him fighting it.

 

Juno didn't know if the THEIA Soul even _could_ feel fear, but it _should_.

 

'Okay. Fine.'

 

'Won't you sit again, Juno?'

 

Cautiously, he returned to the door, crouching in front of it to peer through. The Soul held up both Nureyev's hands, splaying his fingers wide, as if surrendering. Juno knew it was anything but that, but he resumed his seat, turning his back to the doors again and pulling his knees up to his chest. He clasped his hands in front of him, staring at them rather than looking at Nureyev being puppeteered.

 

'Ask your questions, then, Detective.'

 

'Why is he here?' The words came out of him in a rush. There were more important questions to ask than that one, but he still couldn't think straight.

 

'I'm afraid I don't understand the question, Juno.'

 

' _Fine_ .' He didn't want to pretend that the thing talking to him was Nureyev, but it seemed to be adamant on making him do so; if it couldn't convince him the way it had tried through Mick, it seemed it was going to force him to say the things that everything in him wanted to resist, like it could make him speak its distortions of reality into existence.

 

Ramses really had shaped his creation in his own image.

 

'Why are  _you_ here, Nureyev?'

 

'Not for you, Juno.' The voice was still his, but it wasn't playful anymore; or at least, the Soul was playing a different game now. 'I made you a promise, and I intended to keep it. I said I would never return to Mars, and I wouldn't have, had it not seemed absolutely necessary at the time. I came back to see Mayor O'Flaherty. You were never part of the plan.'

 

If it had thought that would hurt him, it was wrong. He was just relieved Nureyev wasn't brought here because of him. 'Why  _did_ you come?'

 

He could hear the smile in Nureyev's voice. 'I believe it's my turn, Detective.'

 

'You didn't even give me a goddamn answer, and now you want an answer from me? Oh, no, I don't think so.'

 

'Not the answer you wanted, maybe; but nevertheless, I gave you an answer, and now I expect one in return.'

 

Juno knew he should stall for time, if it wanted the same answer he couldn't give, but he didn't know how. So he went back on the defensive. 'So what the hell do you want to ask me? I'm still not going to –'

 

'Calm down, Detective. We can stick to lower stakes questions for now. You'll remember this game.'

 

Yes, Juno remembered the game, and he remembered that he'd had no clue how to play it then either. That time, he'd had his own game to play. He supposed he did this time, too. Even if he didn't have the ability he'd had then to see into his opponent's mind. Or, for that matter, his eye. Or Nureyev on the same side as him. He wasn't the same lady he had been then.

 

Still, the version of him that he was now had done a hell of a lot, and had even more to do, even if he didn't feel like he could do any of it. But being Juno Steel had always involved a lot of doing things even when he couldn't do them.

 

'My question, then. Isn't this what you wanted?'

 

The question took him off guard, even more than the situation already had him, and he spun where he was sitting to look through the door. 'Isn't this – _what_ ? What the  _hell_ do you mean, what I wanted? What part of this could I possibly want, _THEIA_ ?'  
  


Nureyev's laugh rippled through the door again. 'Well, not like this, maybe. This probably wasn't what you had in mind.'

 

'You're goddamn right it wasn't.'

 

It continued on as if Juno hadn't spoken. 'But a version of me like this, I mean. I'm sure Mr Mercury filled you in on the advantages of the THEIA Soul. You left me, Juno.'

 

He sucked in a breath. He didn't know how much the THEIA knew about him and Nureyev, but the more he learned of the scope of its knowledge, the less he liked it. 'Yeah.'

 

_And I'm sorry, Nureyev,_ he didn't say, because there was no point. He'd say it to the real Nureyev when he got a chance, if he'd stick around to let him. He might not. But Juno wasn't going to say it to the Soul and expect it to filter through to the real Nureyev.

 

'You wouldn't have, though. If I weren't a thief, if I didn't hurt people. I could be someone you could stay with, Juno.'

 

He couldn't help himself laughing at that, at the sheer absurdity. 'Is that what Ramses thought? That's not why I left.' He hoped, even as he tried not to, that that part might stay with the real Nureyev, even if he decided not to stay. It wasn't because of him. 'You can keep your goddamn sales pitch, it didn't work on me with Mick –' it almost had, but if the Soul didn't already know that, then Juno sure as hell wasn't going to tell it. And besides, this time it was way off base. '– and it's not going to work with this, because you couldn't be more wrong.'

 

Once the initial shock of such a suggestion subsided, though, he couldn't help images coming in unwanted flashes now that the seed of that explanation was planted. He pictured Nureyev waking up alone in that hotel room, reaching out across the bed expecting to find Juno, and only finding it cold and abandoned. Worse, waking up as the door clicked shut behind him. Calling after him. Deciding not to follow. Juno had assumed that the thief would be, if anything, relieved to be free again, without Juno to weigh him down and cause him even more problems than he already had. He hadn't really considered, hadn't let himself think long enough to think how much he could have hurt Nureyev. Peter Nureyev who, after giving Juno everything, he had just left alone to wonder what it was in him that made Juno leave, rather than what Juno would have thought was obvious, if he'd thought about it at all. He'd known it was wrong, an awful thing to do, but not as wrong as leaving his city would have been. But he hadn't trusted himself to stick to that decision if he would have stayed for one more second, even if that might have changed everything for Nureyev; Juno couldn't have risked what it might change for him.

 

Despite whatever Nureyev may have thought about Juno leaving being  _anything_ to do with him, though, Juno knew that he would never hand his body and mind over like this, whatever the Soul was trying to insinuate now. And there was nothing good about this, nothing of what he wanted in someone whose mind wasn't their own. The thought was obscene. The thought was pure Ramses logic.

 

That logic had nearly swayed him, at his lowest point, but he  _knew_ it could never have swayed Nureyev. He couldn't be sure of much anymore about the thief he'd left behind, but he could about this. Even if he really thought that what the Soul said was the reason Juno had left.

 

Juno had never really considered before now what Nureyev might have thought.  
  


The sheer theatricality of the sigh that came gusting through the door was pure Nureyev, and Juno thought it might have been worse when the Soul commandeered the familiar parts of him. His voice was quiet, though, and resigned. There was no threat in it, and none of the THEIA in it, which in itself was enough of a threat; Juno never had fallen into the trap of believing something trying so hard to present a non-threatening appearance.

 

'Then I suppose I really can't convince you this time either.'

 

Juno snorted. 'Is that your question?'

 

'No, Juno. I think the time for questions is past now.'

 

Nureyev's hand reached through the gap in the door, and Juno instinctively jerked away when the long fingers began to lace through his. They stretched out more insistently, and Juno wanted, more than anything, to take his hand and hold it tight and promise any remnant of Peter Nureyev that was left inside that he would get him back. But he couldn't risk that. He'd given an inch to the THEIA Soul before and nearly gave it his everything; hell, he was ready to, already had in his mind, and he would be another puppet walking around if it weren't for Rita.

 

The hand grasped Juno's wrist and jerked him upward, wrenching his arm through the door, up and behind him until his shoulder was screaming at the angle, dragging him to his feet as Nureyev's body slid fluidly to his. It yanked on his wrist again, hard, and Juno's head slammed into the door.

 

He staggered backwards, struggling for all he was worth to keep his feet while his head spun, watching a blurred and tilted version of Nureyev prying the doors apart as easily as a swimmer parting water, those spidery limbs climbing through unhurriedly.

 

It lunged for him. The Soul was back in his hand now, the other coming straight for Juno's face with those long fingers curved into claws. He ducked, skidding along the ground, realising as he did it just how stupid it was to try the same manoeuvre that had barely worked before, but he had to try to get past, if he could just make it to the door –

 

Nureyev's fingers tangled in his collar, those pointed nails scraping against the skin of his neck, and pulled him backwards and off his balance. He kicked out uselessly, trying to gain some grip on the floor, enough to get back to his feet, while he was drawn close enough that Nureyev's face was looming over him and out of the corner of his eye Juno could see his other hand coming closer. Maybe it was just because he'd hit his head, but Juno could have sworn he could see sparks of electricity dancing along the Soul in Nureyev's hand, like it was  crackling in anticipation of burrowing into its intended host.

 

He managed to hook an ankle around the leg of one of the chairs in front of the desk, slowing the pace he was being dragged along the floor infinitesimally as the wood juddered along the floor until the chair overturned and Juno could pull his legs up and out of the way. But it was enough, enough that he could brace them on the floor and jump to his feet as he wriggled out of his coat and sprinted for the door.

 

He had to throw himself against it and shove as hard as he could to squeeze himself through the gap that Nureyev had climbed through, not quite wide enough for Juno to slip through as easily. He used the momentum he gained from gripping the doors to kick backwards into Nureyev's chest, hearing the breath leave him in a surprised rush – the Soul hadn't been expecting that – before swinging himself forwards and out of the room, running as fast as he could. The coat he'd abandoned had his comms in, but he could work that out later, he'd run to Rita if he had to, he just needed to get _away_ –

 

He didn't even hear Nureyev's footsteps coming up behind him – he supposed the Soul's speed wouldn't compromise decades of training to move silently – before he was lifted off his feet and hurled back the way he came as easily as if he weighed nothing.

 

When he hit the desk, it wasn't like he weighed nothing.

 

All the breath he'd managed to gather was driven out of him as he crashed onto it to slide across the polished surface, sending Ramses' papers scattering to the floor, all of his meticulously scripted justifications for this horrorshow crumpling and tearing underneath him. The abandoned glass shattered on the impact of Juno's body, the amber contents pooling around him like a diluted version of the blood leaking from where the few stray shards that weren't swept tinkling to the ground lodged into his back. His vision was still clouded over from the force of the collision when he felt the weight of Nureyev's body landing on him, crushing the glass beneath them and driving the spiked fragments further into Juno's flesh. He gasped for breath that wasn't coming, scrabbling blindly at the edges of the desk to try to claw his way out from underneath Nureyev's body. The edges of his vision were only barely beginning to return when his head tipped off the other side of the desk and he tumbled off, shoving Nureyev away as hard as he could even while he was falling.

 

He dimly registered his fall being broken by something soft. It took Juno a moment to realise that he'd landed on Ramses's body, knocking him out of his chair and onto the ground with him, and there wasn't room in his head for all the shock and revulsion of that to do anything other than race a brief circuit around his mind with everything else already crowding there, before being relegated behind every survival instinct in him screaming as Nureyev's face appeared over him. His face must have hit the desk when Juno rolled off it, because a crack spiderwebbed across one lens of his glasses where they hung askew on his face. Juno wondered for a moment if Nureyev's vision was at all compromised, or if the Soul was compensating for that. His eyes were still as shining and focused as they ever were.

 

Juno headbutted him, sending his head rocking back, and he'd feel guilty later, because for now his only focus had to be scrambling out from under him and to his feet. Nureyev's hand reached up to him as he rose to his knees, grasping at Juno's belt, and he twisted away desperately before realising that it wasn't to pull him back down – realising that his blaster was gone and Nureyev was standing again and aiming it at Juno's head.

 

The way Nureyev moved with a knife like it wasn't even an extension of his body, but rather he an extension of it, showed that that was where his training lay, rather than with a blaster. Still, at this close range, he couldn't miss. Juno was backing up into the wall and holding his hands up like a surrender would mean anything, like this wouldn't mean the end of everything and him failing Rita and failing everyone in Newtown and failing Nureyev by not managing to escape him in time to give him back control of his brain and his body, and –

 

And the shot went wide, missing Juno by at least a foot to ricochet off against the far wall of the office. Nureyev's face remained the impassive blank mask, but the blaster was jerking in his grip as his aim swung around wildly, stuttering across the room, at anywhere but Juno. Nureyev's arms trembled with the effort as he pulled the blaster as to point away from Juno, so far from him that it looked like his arms would wrench themselves out of their sockets.

 

He was fighting it, Juno realised.

 

The blaster swept back to train on Juno, and with an erratic convulsion of his shoulders, Nureyev managed to point it downwards and send the stun blast into the floor, inches away from Juno's feet.

 

He could barely breathe. He was terrified, for Nureyev and of what the Soul would make him do to himself or to Juno, but there was a note of elation singing through him that it was _Nureyev_ again, that he was fighting for control and, even if only to a limited extent, he was _winning_. Juno remembered the agony of fighting against the Spectrum, but that hadn't had its roots lodged as deeply into his brain as the Soul did into its hosts', and he could barely believe that Nureyev was managing this – but of _course_ , if anyone could, it would be him.

 

'Nureyev –'

 

Nureyev looked him in the eye and smiled, before positioning the blaster under his own jaw. The curve of his lips wasn't into the teeth-baring predatory grin, but a soft smile, and his bright, bright eyes didn't leave Juno's as his fingers curled around the trigger and fired.

 

' _Nureyev!_ '

 

His head snapped back with the impact of the shot, exposing his long throat so Juno could see the bright burn mark blooming from the point the stun blast hit it. But it was the same as with Mick; the Soul could push Nureyev past it, and his next shot was directed at Juno, only seconds later. Juno flung himself to the side just barely in time for it to miss his shoulder. It was close enough that the blast singed straight through the fabric of his shirt.

 

There wasn't time for Juno to focus on the struggle happening right in front of him for control of Nureyev's body, he needed to get away _now._ He stayed low, skidding across the floor as he tried to reach the door before another shot could actually reach its mark, but he couldn't help but spin at the sound of Nureyev's knees hitting the ground. There was none of his easy grace in the way his long body buckled, and Juno could see his chest heaving with the effort it must take to pull back control long enough to pull the blaster up to his head again and shoot another stun blast into his own throat.

 

His own voice shouting Nureyev's name over and over again, half sobbing it, was a litany Juno was only barely aware of leaving him as he watched, mesmerised with horror. He couldn't look away from Nureyev's finger flexing on the blaster's trigger, firing at himself repeatedly, the expanse of his throat flooding with the scorch marks from it, until eventually his finger stilled. The blaster hit the floor a moment before his body crumpled to join it.

 

Juno was by his side before his mind could even process the movement, collapsing to his knees to pull Nureyev's prone body towards him, his shaking fingers searching the burnt flesh of Nureyev's throat desperately for a pulse he knew he wouldn't find. The Soul _had_ to bring him back like it did Mick, it had to, and Juno knew he should trust in that and get out while he could before then, but he couldn't, not until he knew.

 

He heaved Nureyev into a cradled position in his arms, and could feel the faintest scraps of breath on his face as he pulled at Nureyev's shirt collar to reach for his chest, the lace sticking to his sweating hands as he pressed down on his breastbone. Juno had no idea what he was doing, it had been so long, but he tried to emulate what he'd watched Rita doing with Mick. The Soul wasn't on Nureyev's chest, rooted close to his heart like Mick's, and Juno didn't know if that would mean it couldn't save him the same way. He didn't want to allow that thought.

 

Nureyev's head lolled forwards as Juno frantically pushed at his chest, his glasses slipping off to skitter across the floor, and the sparks of light from the back of his neck where the Soul was rooted are so blindingly bright they sent spots across Juno's vision. The brackets seemed to be pulsing against his blistered skin as his heartbeat gave a thrum, faint but _there_ , under Juno's hands.

 

The shockwave of relief that coursed through Juno was equal only to the rising fear that came with it. Nureyev was _alive_ , but Juno had to get away before he was back up and fighting with a power that he couldn't match. He had to keep Nureyev here long enough that he could escape, and get back to Rita, get on with saving Newtown before it was too late.

 

The door wasn't going to be able to stop Nureyev, and Juno wouldn't be able to outrun him once he was conscious again. He cast around the room desperately for something, but even if Ramses did have anything, it would take too long to find under the debris of the wreckage they'd left the room in.

 

It felt like an invasion to go in Nureyev's pockets while he was as vulnerable as this, but Juno was certain they'd yield results. He tugged at Nureyev's clothing until he found one. It was a shock to reach in and find it uncharacteristically empty of the assortment he'd expected, only holding another stun blaster, that Juno took out of fear of Nureyev returning to himself and trying the same thing again but with worse results. The next pocket he tried had been similarly cleared out, but contained a pair of handcuffs. Nothing Nureyev couldn't break out of even without the Soul, and with no effort, but they'd at least lend him some time. Juno dragged Nureyev's body across the floor to Ramses' desk, propping him up into a sitting position before cuffing him, looping the chain between through the handle of the desk drawer. Pulling Nureyev's arms upwards, he could see the cascade of bruises blossoming across his arms and shoulders and collarbone; he'd seen those marks on Mick, products of the Soul pushing his body beyond the limits it could stand. They'd turned his stomach then, too, but something clenched in Juno's chest at the knowledge that Nureyev had pushed his body even further than it was already being forced, all in service of protecting Juno.

 

The only way Juno could return that service to him was by leaving now. He'd already been away too long, when he and Rita were the only two people in the whole town who could stop this.

 

It was still agonising to walk away from Nureyev again.

 

He retrieved his coat and blaster from where they'd fallen. While he was shrugging into the coat, the gleam of the fallen pair of glasses caught his eye.

 

Unconscious, covered in burns and bruises, and handcuffed to a desk, Nureyev already looked vulnerable enough. Tentatively, Juno picked them up and set them back on Nureyev's face. It was sheer stupidity, really, to delay his own escape to try to alleviate something that could work in Juno's favour if the time ran out, but some stupid part of Juno felt he owed it to Nureyev before he left. Even if, once again, Nureyev wouldn't even be conscious to see him go.

 

He knew he shouldn't, but Juno looked back when he reached the door. Nureyev's eyes weren't open yet, but he was beginning to stir. He had to go, now. He couldn't risk being there when Nureyev regained consciousness and the Soul sent him back after Juno.

 

It was probably in his imagination, Nureyev murmuring his name as he stepped through the door, he told himself.

 

Juno's legs were leaden as he forced himself into a run on the way out of the building, stopping only to retrieve the dead Soul from earlier , still lying where he discarded it. Its dull glint was almost benign compared to the bright sparking one he'd left still rooted into Nureyev. He clumsily reaffixed it on his neck as he walked into the red haze of the beginnings of dawn on the top of the hill.

 

This was the second time he'd had to choose Hyperion City over Peter Nureyev. But at least this time, he would be saving them both. Juno wasgoing to return Nureyev to himself, just like everyone else in Newtown, and he just hoped that this time, he'd be able to return to him at the end of it.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> The section with the choking starts after the paragraph ending _'His blood speckled Nureyev's glasses.'_ , and is over by the paragraph beginning _'It wouldn't be enough if the Soul were channelling its strength towards those muscles'_
> 
> If there's anything else in need of warning for, please let me know and I'll add it?
> 
> Anyway, if you're down here from finishing it, thank you for reading! And if you could see your way to commenting I would certainly cry.
> 
> I promise I'm going to write some actual catharsis for them because they both fucking need it. I'll post it as separate works though.


End file.
